Rippers attached to the rear end of track-type vehicles are commonly used to fracture or break up rock, concrete, asphalt, and the like into smaller pieces for easier handling. Some of the rippers are provided with an impactor having an oscillating impact element which impacts against the shank of the ripper to aid in the fracturing of extremely hard material. To be effective, the impactors are designed to impart large amounts of kinetic energy into the ripper shank. One of the problems encountered with such an impact ripper is that when the impact ripper is ripping rock, the ripper tip quite frequently encounters fissures, pockets of sand or other weak areas in the rock wherein the loading against the tip drops off drastically. When the impactor is operated without sufficient loading against the ripper tip to absorb the kinetic energy generated by the impactor, severe shock loads are transmitted into the impactor housing and/or the ripper frame. This commonly leads to early fatigue failures in the impactor housing and/or ripper frame.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems as set forth above.